Today’s surprise weekend article is brought to you by the word “open.”
DMing Tools: Get a Free Copy of Open Game Table
For May 31 and June 1 only, if you sign up for (or upgrade to) a premium account on the DMing Tools website offered by Dungeon Mastering, you get a free copy of Open Game Table: The Anthology of Roleplaying Game Blogs, Volume 1 (which retails for $22.95).
Open Game Table
Open Game Table is the first prominent collection of RPG blog content in print form. It collects blog articles from gamers around the world (including two from the Stew), and is intended to bridge the gap between gamers who read RPG sites and gamers who get their RPG goodness from their local stores.
I have my contributor’s copy sitting next to me on my desk, and it’s excellent. It’s well worth buying on its own.
DMing Tools
I finally had a chance to check out Yax’s D&D 4e DMing tools site, and it’s pretty nifty. It’s geared towards GMs who run their games using a laptop — if that sounds like you, it’s well worth a look. Yax provides a simple comparison between the free and premium versions of his service, if you’re curious.
Plus, if you sign up through one of the DMing Tools links in this article, Yax (who runs Dungeon Mastering) will send us free money. GNOMES LOVE MONEY.
It’s a common misconception that dwarves love gold more than any other race — vicious slander, really. It’s gnomes who heart filthy lucre (the filthier the better!). Mmmm, filthy lucre.
Here’s a monster card I found in the database. It’s…eerily accurate:
Lapdancetop GMing
For Gnome Stew tips on GMing with your laptop, check out Laptops at the Gaming Table, Part 1 and Part 2.
Open Design Podcast
The brand spanking new Open Design Podcast just launched, and what a lineup: Wolfgang Baur, Ed Healy, and Rone Barton, and featuring Monte Cook and Skip Williams. If there’s an RPG podcast that features more gaming heavyweights than this one, I’ve never heard of it.
And besides, Monte Cook and Wolfgang Baur love Gnome Stew. Rone Barton and Skip Williams, though? They’re big jerks — HUGE jerks with no taste in game mastering blogs, evidently.
Ahem. Just kidding. Rone and Skip rock, too, of course.
The Open Design Podcast, in addition to featuring a celebrity cast, is brought to you by the team behind Kobold Quarterly and the podcasts Atomic Array, RPG Countdown, and War Pig Radio. That’s one hell of a pedigree.
If you dig gaming podcasts, slip this juicy one into your hot, eager eardrum (and try not to think about the Throbbing Gnomish Monster).
Come for the DM tips, stay for teaching your five year old nephew reading over your shoulder what “wedding tackle” is. (I would have told him it was when you ran up and tackled the groom after he gets married, but since we’re going to an actual wedding in two weeks, I didn’t want him to run up and jump on the poor guy in the middle of the ceremony.)
It sounds like you’ve fulfilled your contractual Aunt/Uncle responsibilities, then:
2.a.i: Corrupt one youth.
😉
I’m entertained and slightly disturbed by the throbbing gnomish monster.